Sinn Féin spokesperson on Climate Action and the Environment, Darren O’Rourke TD, has called on the government to take control of the chaos in Ireland’s failing waste management system.

Ordinary workers and families are being ripped off to protect the profit of waste management companies.

Commenting on a hearing held today in the Oireachtas Climate Committee, the Meath East TD said:

“Domestic waste collection is a murky business here in Ireland. The government has all but abandoned responsibility to the private sector. This has left households excessively exposed to the whims of private bin companies whose raison d’etre is the pursuit of profit rather than service or sustainability.

“The reality is that the privatised system is not working. It is not working for ordinary people and it is not working for the environment. The only group that is benefitting is the private waste sector.

“This came into sharp focus last week when we learned that waste management companies were set to hike their prices to protect their profit margins following the introduction of the Deposit Return Scheme.

“The bin companies have claimed that they are losing out on the valuable cans and plastic bottles that people use to put in their green bins, which apparently are the most valuable items for resale. And therefore, they simply have no option but to raise prices meanwhile households suffer.

“By doing exactly what the government asked them to – using the DRS and continuing to recycle other materials at home – ordinary workers are being punished by rip-off price hikes. This is an outrageous outcome.

“The assumption from the waste management sector that they would be insulated from the DRS while the rest of us have to play ball tells you all you need to know about how this multimillion industry operates.

“It is intensively secretive and profoundly uncompetitive, meaning that powerful private companies can easily exploit customers in this unregulated sector.

“The government has plenty of ways to intervene here to protect households. Unsurprisingly, they seem perfectly content to let private waste companies run roughshod over consumers.

“For example, the CCPC published a report as far back as 2018 which urged the government to establish a regulator of the waste industry. Yet what has the government done? Absolutely zero.

“All of these problems can be traced back to the government’s decision to privatise waste management two decades ago – a move which Sinn Féin fiercely opposed. We knew that privatisation was bad for ordinary workers and families, and for the environment.

“Therefore, Sinn Féin have repeatedly called on the government to recognise the failings of the system and to adopt our alternative proposals to bring the bins back under public control in line with our EU friends and neighbours. Today’s meeting of the Climate Committee has added yet further weight to these claims.

“It is time for Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens to get their act together and address the unfairness and chaos at the heart of Ireland’s private waste management system.”